ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author applies Zygmunt Bauman’s theses from Modernity and Holocaust to analyse, commissioned by the Jewish administration of the Łódź Ghetto, official visual documents. Those made in the avant-garde technique materials, created by imprisoned in the ghetto Jewish artist, were propaganda materials and presented a false, positive picture of the ghetto conditions.
As indicated by the author, both visual and textual layers of those documents refer to the efficiency, effectiveness and rationality of the organisation of the ghetto. These ideas were crucial in Chaim Rumkowski’s survival strategy but also, as Bauman has noted, they played an important role in carrying out the Holocaust. In interpreting these materials, the author proposes to extend Bauman’s perceiving of force by Nazis rational behaviour of the victims, by the issues of the agency and subjectivity of the Jews, absent from the sociologist’s theory. As the author argues, this allows a broader understanding of the reasons for these documents, sees them as a form of resistance to Nazi policy, which was based on a widespread belief in new ideas and, therefore, nuance a view of the functioning of Judenrat.
